


In Which Stiles Channels Kara Thrace

by Lilia



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Peter Hale, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark Peter Hale, Fucked Up, Hurt Stiles, M/M, Marriage Made in Stockholm, Non-Consensual Bondage, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Omega Stiles Stilinski, Omega Verse, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-09 20:21:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8910670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilia/pseuds/Lilia
Summary: A romantic dinner at the Hales.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A Steter Secret Santa gift for Major-Steter, who does not like fluff, so here is my attempt at anti-fluff! WARNING: This is the darkest, most fucked-up story I have ever written and is probably not the best choice if you're looking for some holiday cheer. 
> 
> Happy Holidays! Many thanks to the organizers. 
> 
> This was loosely inspired (triggered?) by the crazy-ass dinner scene between Kara Thrace (aka Starbuck) and Leoben Conoy in Battlestar Galactica "Occupation" which has haunted me since I first saw it during the great BSG marathon of 2009. 
> 
>  
> 
> Also, in case you were curious, here is the actual recipe for Rachel Ray's [molten chocolate cake](http://www.rachaelrayshow.com/recipes/22275_wolfgang_puck_s_molten_chocolate_lava_cakes/)
> 
> Wow, there's now a Chinese translation of this, courtesy of the amazing azarsin. Here's the link for those multilingual geniuses out there. https://archiveofourown.org/works/14043591

“This is lovely, darling,” Peter said, holding the chair for Stiles to take his place.

It really was: his mate had obviously spent hours preparing the meal. “And the table—are the roses from the garden?” Peter smiled as he poured himself a glass of wine. Of course they were. Where else could Stiles find them?

“I picked them,” Stiles said finally, voice only shaking slightly. “I hope that’s okay.”

“Easy, darling. Of course it is.”

“I tried a new recipe,” he added quickly. “Lamb and date tagine, um, with couscous.”

“I’m sure it will be absolutely delicious.” Peter took a bite and smiled. “Oh I love it, sweetheart, thank you.”

His mate took a deep breath, clearly relieved. It was obvious that Stiles had concocted some plan or other. It would have been nice if he’d done all this just to please his Alpha, but they still had a long, long way to go before they reached that point. But that didn’t mean Peter shouldn’t encourage this new line of behavior. “You’re not eating yourself?” he asked, trying to sound mild.

Stiles blinked, like he hadn’t realized, and quickly took a bite.

“Slowly, darling,” Peter laughed. “We wouldn’t want you to get sick.”

Stiles flushed but obeyed, focusing a bit too intently on his plate, working up his courage. Peter opted to stay silent in the hopes of drawing him out. The omega ate absently, which was a shame since the stew really was delicious. Peter wished he could allow Stiles a glass of wine, which might help him relax, but it wasn’t safe with the various drugs.

“I made dessert too,” Stiles said after a minute.

“That’s wonderful. Can you tell me what it is or is it a surprise?” Stiles looked up, alarmed like this might be a trick question. Peter tried but he wasn’t totally successful at squelching his irritation at this excessive degree of skittishness. He knew Alphas who took pleasure in laying traps for their mates, but Peter tried to avoid it, finding them counterproductive. “Just tell me, darling.”

Stiles swallowed, but obeyed. “Molten chocolate cake. I made whipped cream too, and there are raspberries.” He must want something really badly.

“Wow, sweetheart that’s amazing. I had no idea you could make anything like that.”

His mate flinched and Peter wanted to kick himself. The last thing he wanted right now was to sound like he was criticizing.  

“I found it on a cooking show. Rachel Ray made it—she said it wasn’t too hard. I never made anything like it before.” He sounded close to tears.

“Well then I’m lucky that I get to be the first to try it,” Peter said.

It seemed to do the trick. Stiles took a breath and his heartbeat slowed. Poor thing. Peter wished there was some way to reassure him how much he appreciated the effort he was making, finally, but obviously it would take more time.

There was another minute of silence, as Stiles screwed his courage to its sticking point. “Peter….”

“Yes, Stiles?”

“Peter, I’d like to go out.”

“You’re always free to go in the garden, darling,” he said carefully.

“I mean, just, like, leave here, leave the house, just for an hour or something.” He sounded more confident, more urgent, now that he’d gotten the words out. “Go to the grocery store, or to a park, for a walk somewhere, I don’t care, just somewhere.”

Peter carefully put down his knife and fork and patted his lips with his napkin. Thank god omegas couldn’t scent emotions like Alphas because Peter couldn’t help feeling a burst of the old rage at the idea of his omega trying to leave him. He fought to bring it under control, reminding himself that Stiles hadn’t left the property in months. The omega knew better than to try to escape, he just wanted a little break. Peter had no right to be angry that the lovely meal was nothing but a crude quid pro quo, and for something as impossible as actually leaving the property. That Stiles was even willing to work towards a goal represented significant progress. Getting angry right now would be totally inappropriate, not to mention counterproductive.  

He looked up and smiled mildly at his mate. Unfortunately, he should have remembered that getting angry, indulging in disappointment, led to errors. That was the only excuse for the unforgiveable words that next left his mouth: “Well, I suppose we could always try the book club again.”

The reaction was instantaneous and should have been predictable. Stiles let out a howl and practically leapt across the table. It happened so fast, Peter wasn’t able to react and next thing he had the jagged shards of a broken wine glass jammed in his neck. If he’d been human he’d have been dead, and as it was, the pain was outrageous. Fortunately, before the omega could reach to jam it in further, Peter managed to hit the button on his watch. He’d meant to hit the tranquilizer, but in his fumbling he activated the tase function on the collar. His mate’s entire body lurched and he landed on the floor, seizing.

Though it wasn’t pleasant while he was gushing arterial blood, Peter forced himself to deal with Stiles first, getting him back to their room and safely strapped to the bed. He was still having seizures, so Peter gave him a dose of sedative and made sure to turn his head to the side. He’d also wet himself, but that at least could wait until Peter had dealt with his own injury.

He spent the next incredibly unpleasant fifteen minutes using tweezers and a magnifying glass to remove more than a dozen shards of glass from his neck so the wound could close properly. All during his minor surgery, he’d kept an eye on the bedroom monitor. There’d been a few minutes of drooling and some mild seizures, but Stiles was crying now and tugging at his restraints, which indicated he was aware and had regained basic motor functions. According to the Vitals Ap on his phone, the omega’s heart rate and respiration were stable.

Peter, however, was still covered with blood and his dining room resembled a horror movie set. He opted to clean the worst of it up since it would give him time to decide how to deal with Stiles. So he set about bagging up the bloodstained plates and table linens, using newspaper to wrap the remains of the wine glass. Apparently he’d be drinking his wine from plastic goblets for the foreseeable future—not the part of college he’d hoped to relive.

The bouquet of roses had somehow survived. They made his heart ache. Even more than the meal, those roses were evidence of real progress. The omega had spent time trying to think of something that might please his Alpha and the result had been flowers, a thoughtful, even romantic gesture, and one that was totally unnecessary, and which Peter had never asked for or suggested in any way. And he couldn’t forget the sheer trouble the omega went to trying to cut an entire bouquet of roses without any kind of blade or garden shears.

Peter couldn’t bring himself to toss them so he put the vase on the kitchen counter. He noticed the oven was on and two small baking dishes with chocolate batter were sitting out, like an accusation, just waiting to be baked. He swallowed down his anger at himself. He needed to stop being negative and figure out a way to turn tonight around.

Once the worst of the dining room was taken care of, he could finally strip off his ruined clothes--including his favorite loafers, such a shame--and add them to the bag to put out the back door.

He couldn’t face his mate covered in blood, so he’d need a shower and Stiles would need a bath as well, so Peter headed for the master bath. He turned the tap for the tub and then ducked into the shower, hoping the scalding water would clear his thoughts and maybe even inspire some brilliant plan to mitigate the effects of tonight’s disaster.

The whole thing was annoying, but mostly he was angry with himself. Peter rarely made such serious mistakes, and there was no excuse here. Taunting Stiles with the book club debacle deserved to count as a lifetime low in terms of boneheaded incompetence.

It had been a full three months since Stiles last managed to hurt him, and almost four weeks since he’d even tried. Peter didn’t let down his guard or deceive himself that there’d be no more incidents, but he’d been confident that they’d passed the worst of the violent acting out. And tonight couldn’t count as backsliding: Stiles had been trying to be good and he would have succeeded if Peter hadn’t acted like an asshole. The first rule of managing an omega was _always_ to reward good behavior. It didn’t matter what _their_ motive was, whether it was manipulation or even a pitiful little rebellious plot.

Peter also knew damn well that exposing any disappointment to Stiles inevitably backfired: sometimes the boy would repeat the behavior as a futile gesture of protest, and otherwise it just made him feel defeated and hopeless.  

Peter had known going in that the omega would be an extraordinary challenge, given his particular combination of intelligence and stubbornness. The only possible remedies were patience and persistence. Stiles must never for a second doubt that Peter was going to outlast him. That his Alpha was not upset or surprised by the omega’s resistance, but that he would use whatever methods necessary to prevent misbehavior or attempts at self-harm. Peter could heal any injuries his mate managed to inflict, and nothing Stiles did would discourage him or lessen his certainty that the omega would ultimately accept their relationship.  

Though conventional wisdom frowned on the very idea of an Alpha apologizing to an omega, Peter wondered if this once, it might actually be useful. After all, his own behavior had been inexcusable. It was a simple way to take responsibility, show that he wasn’t angry or hurt, and make clear to Stiles how pleased he was at the effort he was making. It would enable them to move past this quickly.

He thought back to his omega’s initial request—to leave the property. It was troubling that Stiles had asked for that when he could have chosen several things Peter would have been more willing to negotiate for: something like access to video games or even the internet for research, which Peter would have agreed to in a nanosecond; or less time spent restrained, something Stiles absolutely loathed and which Peter also wanted to reduce if he could do so in a way that would benefit him; or fewer sedatives, which Stiles also hated.

Stiles was no fool: he would know the risks of asking to leave, know that it was a long-shot. This had clearly not been a spur-of-the moment request. He’d most likely been mulling it over, working up to it for days if not weeks. It was painful to have his suspicion confirmed, but Peter was almost positive his omega had risked asking for that because it was the only thing he truly wanted. This entire process would have been so much easier if Stiles had been willing to strive for things Peter could actually give him.

But maybe he could find a compromise. Clearly being restricted to the property was making his mate a little stir-crazy. He might have a rare opening here: he could demand some concessions from Stiles in return for, say, a drive in countryside?

The water in the tub was almost filled, so Peter got out of the shower and turned the tap off, and then toweled off though he’d be getting in the tub himself in a minute.

Back in the bedroom, Stiles had drifted off to sleep, his face still stained with tears. An attack like that required some response, so Peter grabbed the mittens from the closet and started buckling them on. Even asleep Stiles resisted. His mated detested all restraints, but he especially loathed the mittens. And Peter had to concede that there was something fiendish about them: how such an innocuous bit of apparel, strongly associated with childhood and afternoons in the snow, could render the wearer so helpless with the simple addition of a buckle that made them impossible to remove. Most Alphas didn’t consider them a real punishment, since they didn’t cause pain and left the omega free to move about; Peter considered that a pathetic lack of imagination.

As Stiles came awake he only fought harder, though there was not much he could do while in the bed’s five-point restraints. “That’s enough,” Peter warned. He was careful to keep his tone firm but not angry, but the stench of terror still filled the room. “Listen carefully, darling: You’re dirty. You need a bath, and we need to talk about what happened. Just talk, nothing else, I promise.” Peter was extremely careful to keep promises, so Stiles calmed marginally. “Can I release the restraints?” he asked. Stiles swallowed and nodded. There was no blip in his heartbeat, but even more Peter trusted the scent of defeat pouring off of him, so he unlocked the various straps.

He sent a quick text for someone to come change the sheets, and then lifted Stiles up bridal style and carried him into the bathroom. For once Stiles just stood passively while Peter fetched some plastic bags and tape to keep the mittens dry. It was a measure of how exhausted and upset he was, which gave Peter some hope that he would be able to use tonight’s incident to make some real progress.

He lifted Stiles into the tub and then got in himself and settled his mate on his lap. Stiles tensed again as Peter used a cloth to wash the blood—his blood--off the omega’s face. Tonight was the worst Stiles had ever managed to hurt his Alpha so it was understandable that he’d be working himself into a panic.

Peter needed to shut that down quickly since the omega was unreachable when he was terrified. “Sweetheart, I need you to calm down. We need to talk and I don’t want to give you more sedative. First, I know you’re worrying about the punishment, so let’s get that out of the way. You’ll get the usual for hurting me, but just the mittens, no tether or shackles, and if you wish to prepare a meal again, you’ll be allowed to take them off for a few hours. If there are no complaints or incidents, we’ll keep it to one week.”

There was a slight but detectable relaxing of the omega’s muscles and his scent improved. Peter congratulated himself that he’d hit the sweet spot he’d been trying for: not as harsh as Stiles had feared but not so light that he’d be worried about the other shoe dropping.

“Second, I owe you an apology.” Stiles tensed again. “Easy darling,” he said soothingly, rubbing Stiles’ neck in a way that omegas found calming. “There’s nothing here for you to be alarmed about. I’m sorry for what I said. I hate that I made such a needlessly cruel remark after you went to so much trouble to make me a special meal. I was upset at the thought that you might want to leave me, but that’s no excuse for saying something so hurtful.”    

Stiles actually turned his head to look at Peter, as if to see if he was sincere. Peter raised his eyebrows and Stiles reluctantly nodded. He believed him. Excellent. Any acknowledgement or engagement was a small victory. Peter’s confidence rose.

“Darling, I have a proposal.” This time Peter waited for Stiles to respond.

“What…?” His voice cracked. “Whah, what proposal?”

“Well, I liked your idea: something I want, in return for something you want,” Peter said. That wasn’t strictly true: he’d prefer that Stiles tried to please him without conditions or an agenda, but at least this was something he could work with. “So how about this: once your punishment is over and assuming we have a good week, we can take a drive.”

“What do you want in return?” he asked, sounding anxious.

“Well, ideally, I’d like to try for a baby again, but I know you’re not ready, and I don’t want sex to be part of a quid pro quo between us. So in the meantime, I’d like you to sign up for some online classes, maybe think about finally getting your diploma?”

Tears started streaming down the omega’s face and his scent took on a new note that Peter would characterize as exhausted despair. He kissed his mate on the temple, feeling more and more confident that he’d just scored a major victory. Stiles had steadfastly refused most constructive activities or hobbies, sort of the mental equivalent of a hunger strike for someone with ADHD, as if anything that made him less miserable would amount to a slippery slope, leading inexorably to his accepting their relationship. He was absolutely right, of course, which was why Peter was willing to offer something that was ostensibly solely to Stiles’ benefit in return for such a major concession as allowing him off the property.

“I’ll let you think about it,” Peter said gently. “But what I’d like right now, is for you to show me how to finish those chocolate cakes you made. And then we can share them on the patio. Would that be nice, darling?” He smiled expectantly.

Stiles had clearly exhausted his stores of defiance for today. He nodded and then made no effort to resist when Peter helped him out of the tub, dried him off, and then dressed in a T-shirt and some loose sweats and slippers, the only clothes he could manage with the mittens.

He was equally passive as Peter guided him into the kitchen and helped him to a seat. “Just tell me what to do,” Peter said encouragingly.

Stiles blushed sharply, a little eruption of temper at being forced to wear the mittens, but the defiance seemed to just peter out. “Uh, you, um, just bake them for five minutes, and then they need to be turned and baked for another three.”

“That’s it?” Peter said, sliding them in the oven and setting the timer. “They look like soufflés—I was sure there’d be all sorts of dire warnings about opening the oven door or avoiding loud noises.”

“No,” Stiles said, actually volunteering information for once. “The recipe said they were foolproof. There’s, uh, whipped cream in the fridge.”

“Perfect. Go wait on the patio. I’ll bring it out as soon as it’s done.”

For once Stiles obeyed without any hesitation. The two dessert plates Stiles had put out wouldn’t work, so Peter fetched a dinner-sized plate and a single spoon. Peter was an expert in the kitchen, and did in fact know how to make molten chocolate cakes. As soon as they were done baking, he gave them a few minutes to cool and then plated them more artfully than Stiles or most restaurants could have, adding a dollop of whipped cream and a scattering of raspberries. As a final romantic touch he added a few rose petals. Perfect.

Out on the patio, Stiles was sitting hunched, staring absently at the pool. Peter put the plate down and took a seat on the bench. “Come,” he said firmly, patting his lap.

Stiles looked for a second like he wanted to protest and then just gave up and walked over. He seemed shellshocked.

Peter lifted him onto his lap and settled the omega’s head on his shoulder. He flashed his eyes as a quiet warning, and then took a spoonful of the dessert and fed it to him. Stiles didn’t try to protest, even opening his mouth for the cake. After only a few bites, the omega’s scent improved noticeably. Being fed by an Alpha was a primal drive for mated omegas, one Stiles had fought at every turn. Peter was sure his own scent was radiating contentment that his mate was finally submitting to being cared for.

After feeding Stiles the first cake, he took a bite of his own. “Oh, it’s just delicious, sweetheart. Thank you.”

Once he finished the cake, he sat back in the chair, pulling Stiles closer. Stiles made a token struggle, but gave up when Peter tightened the grip holding him in place. “We’ll get through this, I promise,” he said. There was no longer any question: they’d turned a corner. Peter had finally broken Stiles’ resistance. He was so certain he even felt safe saying, “I love you, darling.”

He could scent the tears as they streamed down the omega’s face. Peter kissed them gently. No doubt there’d be many more.

 


End file.
